


I'll see you where the cherry blossoms fall

by tothemovies (jayjem_jam)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Gen, could become shippy if we as a community view it as such, headcannon add on?, high school kids vibing, they're just watching sakura blossoms your honour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:34:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23997592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayjem_jam/pseuds/tothemovies
Summary: “Why’d you ask to come with me today?” He arches his brows. Tic for tac. Fukunaga’s mouth twists, a cat in contemplation, before his shoulders rise and fall.“Just because.”He parrots it back. “Then just because.”Fukunaga does look a lot less creepy when he’s grinning impishly under sakura buds, cheeks flushed, hair all fluffed up from impromptu races around Nerima. But that’s for him to know and for him to hold.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	I'll see you where the cherry blossoms fall

**Author's Note:**

> once upon a time i said i would write for these two and now i have so i'm pretty proud of me myself and i have some tora and fukunaga bonding time

Tora usually catches the train with the rest of the team on Wednesdays, but that was before Akane asked him to accompany her to study sessions in her friend’s house and well, before he took a more than lukewarm interest in The Bike. 

It’s nothing fanciful - grandmother had bestowed the gift upon them with the ominous instruction of ‘Use it, or else’, then left. Literally everybody in his family catches the subway to work and school and they hardly use the car, even for grocery shopping. It’s not a big neighbourhood and Yamamotos prefer the exercise. 

He was feeling whimsical when he decided to bike to school, but in his defence, he missed the early train  _ and  _ the captain would actually kill him if he missed morning practice. So it was the Bike Life to go, and it’s nice, nice to know that streets exist, trees are around, normal human people walk and drive as they do. 

It’s Bike Life every Wednesday, after practice. He would goodbye to the senpais, the kouhais, then it’s Go Time on the slab of metal. Tora just needs to get a few things from his locker then he can go see his sister for boba. 

Except he’s accosted by the lockers. Somebody is already standing there, sharp eyes watching him like a haunted doll. Tora skids to a cautious stop, eyes meeting Fukunaga’s perpetually sleepy half-closed eyes, his own eyes squeezed in a distrustful squint.

“Fukunaga,” he nods, a certified Bro™ tilt to it. Captain told him he looks stupid doing it. He told the guy that he’s too cool, the older generation wouldn’t even begin to understand his coolness. 

“Yamamoto,” Fukunaga peels himself off the lockers, like this is something he normally does and they’re suddenly best buddies now. He sprayed Tora like a cat last practice to separate him and Kenma. He’s not about to skip into the sunset holding this guy’s hands and singing kumbaya. “Saw you biking to school today.”

Tora was right. He was right in being suspicious from the start.

“I did. And you’re not getting a free ride off it, buddy.” 

Fukunaga continues to stare, like a creep. Like a creep that Tora has to share a team with, a creep that is already practising with the  _ senpais  _ despite being in the same year as him. A creep that is his problem in the club for the foreseeable high school years ahead of him. He huffs, hunches down to his locker, digging out his shoes amidst all the chaotic high school mess, Fukunaga still looming in the vicinity. 

“I was going to ask to run along, while you bike,” the creep teammate announces, after a whole minute of him rifling through his mess. 

“Like, on foot?” He turns up his nose in vague disgust. 

Fukunaga just stares at him, like he’s being a moron on purpose. Tora rifles aggressively through his locker some more.

“Is it still a no if I’m not sharing a bike with you?” The Creep Teammate presses.

Tora stands, dusting off nonexistent dirt off his uniform, considering it. Fukunaga isn’t  _ that  _ annoying when he exists roughly about a metre away from Tora, a distance he will  _ vigorously  _ maintain. More importantly, he’s not too sure how Fukunaga will take rejection because the guy doesn’t do a whole lot of existing off a volleyball court on a daily basis, so it’s doubtful that he asks people for favours very often. It’s already crossing too many grounds and Tora is stressed out  _ for  _ Fukunaga, because people who don’t have a rejection tally tend to react on the Extremely Nasty side of the reaction scale. Tears and punches and all the drama.

“Do not,” Tora breathes in, eyes hard, zeroing in on Fukunaga. “Make unnecessary body contact. I was an unwilling party.”

Fukunaga gives him an unhelpful shrug. Tora maintains his half-glare, shutting his locker with a knee.

  
  


Generally, people who join a sport club either are fit to begin with, or they will have to be fit to remain in the clubs, so Fukunaga would have to fall in one of the categories. The Nekoma Volleyball Club prides themselves on resilience and endurance, maintaining long plays and stable receives, so people who make the cut to the regular lineup tend to fall more into the ‘already fit’ box. Kenma, for example, is being whipped to be in shape, and he hates it, but it’s for the good of the team, plus he’s too good to not be a regular, so sometimes you gotta eat bitter to taste sweet.

Now Fukunaga, Fukunaga is a complete enigma. Tora kinda just assumed the guy wasn’t much to begin with and doesn’t have much to progress with too, but they’re both gearing up to become regulars and they play in the same team, so he sees him, but he hasn’t got the chance and full view to  _ look  _ at him.

It’s eerie, because Fukunaga slouches and has weird eyebrows and looks like a lucky cat on his better days, and he definitely has the gait of a refined gorilla on most days, but he keeps pace with Tora on his bike with ease. He’s dead middle when they do group warm up jogs, stably average with his receives, nothing more, nothing less. There’s no cause for Tora to see more when there wasn’t anything to see more.

But now, there is. Look at him, the bastard! He’s sprinting 40km per hour easily on foot. At this rate, he’ll make it to Saitama  _ and  _ back within the hour, and probably not even tired! Ridiculous! This is plainly shocking, horrendous, baffling, he is suing everyone and their dogs -

When they stop at a red light, Tora makes deliberate eye contact with a droopy-eyed Fukunaga, flushed in the face.

“Race you to the next one,” he tells the guy, who heaves out a breath, then tilts his head. 

“What does the winner get?” Huffs Fukunaga.

“A week’s worth of dried squid,” he answers, easily. “For you. And if I win, you’ll race me at lunch from tomorrow onward.”

Fukunaga’s face twists. “Yamamoto, your stamina is better than mine.”

“Well you’re faster, to cough it up, manekineko boy.”

Diving his answers from the clouds, current climate disasters, traffic speed and wind speeds - who  _ knows  _ \- Fukunaga hums, nodding at him. 

“You’re on.”

  
  


Tora wins, though it’s by a very thin margin. It’s a split of half a second, too fast for anything - plus he already was biking for 5 kilometres around the block, towing Fukunaga about like a disgruntled pet. Fukunaga might be freakishly fast, but he’s also at devastatingly normal capacity when it comes to stamina. As far as races go, it’s inconclusive as heck, so Tora walks them both to a convenience store to bag some dried squid in his cart, because  _ I feel bad for you, look at you, I feel like I have to feed you.  _

“Yamamoto-kun, why can’t you just say that you have a shred of kindness in you?” Fukunaga complains, probably just for the sake of complaining and banter between teammates, as he accepts the treat, hugging it to his chest. They’ve divested their spray jackets, walking idly, one with a bike, one stooping now and then to say hi to cats and wave at them. All is good. The weather could be worse. Tora doesn’t entirely hate it even if he wasn’t all too gung ho about it happening in the beginning stages. 

“Unlike Kuroo-san,” he says around a mouthful of bread and yakisoba, “I ain’t in the habit of being a tsundere and not admitting that I’m kind. In my big, beautiful, soulful and manly heart, you deserve the squid, so take the squid, Fukunaga, before I feed it to the next cat we see.”

Fukunaga’s response to this is to stuff everything into his mouth and ball up the packaging to shove it into the back of his shirt. Tora cringes bodily, squirms out of it all and shrieks at him to  _ come back here, I’ll stuff sauce down the back of your neck, see how you feel, Fukunaga! _

  
  


They make it by the Shakujii river, sakura buds out, getting ready to bloom, give or take a couple weeks or so. Their school year is almost ending, the spring break is almost upon them, he can’t wait to laze around and practice endlessly. It’ll be good to catch up to people too, friends from middle school, some cousins in Saitama, wrestle with Akane a little.

“Fukunaga,” he says, stopping under green leaves and a stooping branch. “Ya doing anything for spring break?”

The other boy has eyes closed, nose upturned, just trying to become one with the trees - honestly though, go stupid, go crazy, it’s not like it’s a terrible plane of existence to trade off for. 

“Nothing too exciting,” Fukunaga breathes in. Then out. Then opens his eyes. “Why’d you ask?”

“Why’d you ask to come with me today?” He arches his brows. Tic for tac. Fukunaga’s mouth twists, a cat in contemplation, before his shoulders rise and fall.

“Just because.”

He parrots it back. “Then just because.”

Fukunaga does look a lot less creepy when he’s grinning impishly under sakura buds, cheeks flushed, hair all fluffed up from impromptu races around Nerima. But that’s for him to know and for him to hold.

  
  


They meet again, Wednesday, first week out of school. Kenma was asked and rejected them. Tora told Fukunaga that he tried. Fukunaga patted his mohawk like one would console a disgruntled house cat, humming noncommittally. 

He’s on his bike again, mismatched socks and dirty runners. He’s leaning arms and elbows on the handlebar, chatting idly with Fukunaga in front of his house, his family sort of spying on them. Must be a strange sight. Their emotionally stilted son chatting with a punk right on their turf. Tora asks if Fukunaga is happy to go now, and if he trusts him.

Fukunaga does not. He side eyes Tora immediately.

“You’re not asking me to do something scandalous like your hair, right, Yamamoto-kun?”

He barks out a laugh, hand carding through the rough fuzz of violently brass bunch of hair. 

“I made a promise and I kept it, okay, buddy, like a real man, and I ain’t ashamed of what I did. If anything, people notice me more now!” He vibrates excitedly on the bike, thinking hard about the team finally gaining that respect from the general populace.

“I’m sure it was all for the right reason, Yamamoto-kun,” Fukunaga nods once, taps his shoe onto the ground. “What’s the plan today?”

He grins, wide and feral.

“Hop on the back, and we’ll see.”

Fukunaga eyes him, screening him for bullshit. That’s rude. He’s a man of his words. He keeps all of the promises and oaths he made.

“I trust you not to drop me,” the boy primly sits on the backseat, easily putting next to nothing on the bike. 

He steps a foot on the pedal, cackling. 

“Trust, Fukunaga, I’ve driven heavier than you, you’re fine. Hold onto me when you need to.”

“Who did you even bike on this? I thought you don’t allow anyone on it?” 

“Sister!” He throws back a grin, half a face eclipsed. “Kid eats enough for ten people.”

Fukunaga’s fingers wind themselves into his shirt, a laugh lost in the whizz of the wind brushing by them. “Don’t tell her that, she’ll hit you.”

“What makes you think I told her?” He grins.

“Same as when I see you getting into fights with Kenma still. Stop getting into fights, they make us look like hooligans.”

“No promises, no promises.”

  
  
  


The sakuras are in bloom and they just manage to catch the tail end of it, before it all falls to the river and is carried away. A  _ hanami  _ was suggested, but the third years are busy and the second years all got their own things and Kenma is basically second year-adjacent by now, so it’s just Tora and Fukunaga, bonding, seeing flowers and all that.

“Huh,” Fukunaga stares up at the overlapping pink petals, existing so much in their multitude that hardly any green is left for the eye. “Magnificent.”

Tora beams. “Ain’t it? Isn’t it good that I dragged you out here?”

Fukunaga rolls his eyes, then bumps into him, bony shoulder lingering against his arm before moving away. “I guess, Yamamoto-san.”

“Gee, just call a guy Tora, will ya? This formality is killing me.”

“Then will you call me Shouhei?” Fukunaga challenges, eyebrows raised.

He pauses. Thinks about it. “I’m not super into it but I could do it under duress.”

The other snorts, clearly amused, because Tora is a comedian, top notched humour and wit. “I’m surprised you even know what duress is, Yamamoto-san.”

“Dude, half the team calls me Tora. It’s fine. You can do it. Say it with me. Tor -  _ argh! Fukunaga! Not the back of the knee!”  _

(They take a commemorative picture, the two of them by the river railing. Fukunaga draws whiskers on his copy. Tora scribbles  _ bastard man  _ where Fukunaga’s face is. The photos hang in their respective rooms, among many other memories.)

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/hozukitofu) and [cc](https://curiouscat.me/jenny_benny)! i have a writing [twitter](https://twitter.com/jayjem_jam) if anyone is interested in more bs or we can just vibe in the void together


End file.
